Bluetooth Smart Technology Enables Next Generation Health Care

2017/3/6 14:38:05
Source: SIG
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Summary：Health Care

As Executive Director of the Continua Health Alliance, which promotes the ecosystem of devices and systems in personal connected health, I keep a close eye on the technology industry. New technologies, products and even marketing campaigns provide signals on the direction of the market and reveal a lot about corporate priorities. If you haven’t read it, take a look at Bluetooth SIG Chief Marketing Officer Suke Jawanda’s recent interview with MedTech Pulse Blog about Bluetooth® technology’s future in the medical industry. There’s no question close-proximity technologies will be important to the future of healthcare delivery, so I was delighted with Suke’s evident commitment to leveraging the full potential of Bluetooth for healthcare applications.

Continua’s Design Guidelines enable end-to-end plug-and-play solutions in personal connected health—that is, the flexible creation and use of devices and systems by and among consumers, physicians, hospitals and administrators. Our Design Guidelines incorporates 13 different standards sets used commonly around the world. Bluetooth has been a part of our guidelines since the early days.

Most recently, we added Bluetooth Smart capability. This technology is particularly exciting for its potential in healthcare. Meeting the needs for flexibility, ubiquity and long use is critical to ensure continuous data streaming from consumer health devices to mobile, web or other wireless storage devices. In turn, this enables long-term data tracking and analysis.

It’s easy to imagine scenarios where these features become important:

Consider a diabetic teen requiring ongoing monitoring of

glucose levels. This can be achieved with a wireless

glucometer and a smart phone paired via Bluetooth

Smart

for passive data tracking (no effort on the part of busy or

forgetful teenager). In this case, the power-conserving

features of the technology are both for convenience and

patient safety.This same teenager could be part of a

remote monitoring program (involving professional

oversight as well as patient tracking), an

approachoffering

enormous potential for chronic disease management.

Mobile devices are not always connected to the Internet,

but fortunately, SMS shoulder tap capability performs

remote wake up of a device to enable data collection or

other commands. With shoulder tap capability in place,

our teen’s telemonitoring center can ask the Bluetooth

glucometer to take spot check readings according to

doctor’s orders. Continua is in the process of adding

shoulder tap functionality to its interoperability Design

Guidelines to enhance the possibilities for mobile and

remote care using technologies such as Bluetooth Smart.

Here’s a second example: a middle-aged consumer

attempting to lose weight. Perhaps he’s already fit and

tracking preventively, or maybe he’s overweight. He can

pair a Bluetooth Smart wireless weight scale with a

health

and fitness app on a smart phone. Unless other health

issues complicate weight loss efforts, continuous

monitoring is generally not necessary. In this case, when

the weight scale sleeps, Bluetooth Smart conserves

power but stands ready to transmit data as soon as the

scale is activated. As Suke pointed out in hi

MedTech Pulseinterview, power consumption is based

on how little the device’s radio is used. Since it takes

Bluetooth Smart three milliseconds to wake up from

sleep

mode, send its data, and then shut back down, our

weight

loss patient will experience extremely long battery life

from a Bluetooth Smart enabled weight scale.

For consumers, payors and even for OEMs designing for the healthcare market, user-friendly pairing, convenient data collection and cost-efficiency will drive the adoption and creative use of close-proximity technologies in healthcare, and Bluetooth Smart meets all of these demands. Of course, privacy and security are of the utmost importance and here, Bluetooth Smart 128 bit AES encryption and adaptive frequency hopping ensure timely and reliable data relay are right on target. With new interest in connected health from mobile carriers, there’s no question Bluetooth Smart will see new applications in the field.

Note: Bluetooth SIG, Continua, NFC Forum and Roche Diagnostics will continue the conversation about the potential for near proximity technologies in healthcare on a panel at the WIMA USA (San Francisco) conference next month, “Near Proximity Technologies & The Connected Health Ecosystem,” taking place Wednesday October 30 at 9:00 a.m. I hope you can join us.

Please feel free to connect with me on Twitter at: @Continua, or on our LinkedIn Group (Continua) to share your thoughts on Bluetooth Smart in connected health.